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Two years ago, the attorneys general from Oregon and Washington filed nearly identical lawsuits in their states alleging that 5-hour Energy ads deceived consumers by suggesting the shots are superior to coffee and recommended by doctors. In the last few days, the verdicts came in—and they’re completely opposite.

In Washington, King County Superior Court Judge Beth Andrus ruled Friday(PDF) that the scientific data didn’t back up the claim that 5-hour Energy’s combination of vitamins and caffeine worked “in a synergistic way” to make it superior to coffee.

“None of the studies … support the claim that combining specific B vitamins, taurine, choline, glucuronolactone and tyrosine with caffeine will cause the energy, alertness and focus effects of caffeine to last longer than if the caffeine were consumed alone,” Andrus wrote.

In her ruling, filed Monday, Andrus also found a lack of data to suggest that the decaf version of the shots worked at all. Last, she concluded that an “ask your doctor” ad campaign misled consumers to think that medical professionals recommended drinking the shots when in reality they were tricked into agreeing with a statement on a survey. Andrus will rule later, at an unscheduled time, what penalties the makers of 5-hour Energy, Living Essentials LLC and Innovation Ventures LLC, will face.

“The makers of 5-hour Energy misled consumers in pursuit of profit,” Washington’s Attorney General Bob Ferguson said in a statement. “They broke the law, and they will be held accountable for their deception.”

But in Oregon, it’s a different story. In a ruling (PDF) last Tuesday, Oregon Circuit Court Judge Kelly Skye cleared the makers of all allegations of deceits. She concluded that whether a drink is better than coffee is a subjective opinion and that the “ask your doctor” ad campaign was sufficiently vague about whether doctors actually recommended the shots in general.

“This message could only be gleaned by implication, as the plain language of the ad is clearly limited,” Skye wrote.

The 30-second ad in question said:

“We asked over 3,000 doctors to review 5-Hour Energy. And what they said was amazing. Over 73 percent who reviewed 5-hour Energy said they would recommend a low calorie energy supplement to their healthy patients who use energy supplements. Seventy-three percent. 5-hour Energy has four calories and it’s used over nine million times a week. Is 5-hour Energy right for you? Ask your doctor. We already asked 3,000.”

On the actual survey given to doctors, the question was worded in a tricky way, Washington’s Judge Andrus ruled. It first introduced 5-hour energy as a low-calorie, low-fat, low-sodium energy drink, before asking doctors if they’d recommend a similar energy drink. The question was written is such a way to suggest that a “no” response meant that the doctor would instead recommend a high-calorie, high-fat, high-sodium energy drink to those that partake in such beverages.

In a statement to Consumerist, Living Essentials LLC blasted Washington’s Attorney General, Ferguson, for even bringing the case. “The amount of resources Bob Ferguson wasted to boost his political profile is astonishing,” the statement read. “As is typical of Ferguson, he is grossly misrepresenting the facts of the case, perhaps as a way to distract from his own troubles… Ferguson should focus less on his political aspirations and more on the wellbeing of the people of Washington.”